


Snakeskin

by Bentclaw



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 09:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3723919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bentclaw/pseuds/Bentclaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emily sheds her skin, Snake imagines what that would be like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snakeskin

**Author's Note:**

> This is an attempt at getting out some personal thoughts about Snake. Given the setting I think that his snake/human hybrid status is as likely as anything else. We've seen him worry about looking like a normal human in canon, but since he's meant to be a mix of human and snake I thought it could go the other way too. So here's a situation in which he's wishing very hard to be a normal snake. It's a little odd, hopefully someone out there will like it anyway.
> 
> Since his communication with the snakes is usually close to silent in the series, I'm marking snake-talk with italics instead of quote marks.

Emily was shedding her skin.

Snake always watched closely when one of his snakes seemed like they were about to shed. He shared many aspects of snake life with them. He could understand and speak with them with no effort at all. He had eyes like a viper’s and a forked tongue that tasted the air, although he was not nearly as adept at interpreting those signals as his friends. He even smelled like a snake, or so they told him. But his scales came through his human skin in patches, so he could not shed in the same way they did. His scales weren’t connected to each other. They would itch and flake off in separate pieces, which wasn’t the same as pulling off a whole skin all at once.

The shedding process was mesmerizing. If the snake was healthy the old skin would just peel off in one piece. Scars and marks would be erased and a new layer of skin, scaled and smooth from head to tail, would be revealed. He wondered what it would be like to have a fresh skin. It seemed like it would be nice. He had to admit though, it was awfully unpleasant for the snakes. Having their skins come loose was uncomfortable for them. First their scales would lose their color and their eyes would dull as fluid filled the layer under the old skin. Their eyesight was blocked during this time and it was scary for them, even though they knew it was only temporary. His friends had the benefit of knowing that a group was looking out for danger, but it was hard for them to quell their instinctive nervousness. Snakes during a shed knew they were vulnerable.

Every snake reacted differently to this. Most of them would keep well away from the others. They sought out small places where they could curl up and defend themselves if necessary. They never liked to be held during a shed, even though curling around his shoulders or wrapping around an arm offered them a high vantage point and a safe place to rest. Often, like Emily, they became more aggressive. No matter how many times it happened Snake was always surprised to see his gentle friend try to strike him. Emily had been the first of the snakes to accept him into their group. Some of them had wanted to bite him when he had been forced suddenly into their cage, but Emily had put a stop to that at once by slithering up his arm and announcing _He’s warm, let’s keep him._

They had only been in their new home at Phantomhive Manor for a few days when her shed started. The new location had her disoriented and all traces of her calm personality were gone. _Don’t touch me_ she hissed, flinging herself out toward the slightest movement with her fangs bared. _Don’t come near me_. Everyone kept well away from her hiding space beneath the bed. They had long since abandoned the desire to fight each other.

After a few days of hiding her eyesight returned and she began moving around their room rubbing on things. She was looking for something rough to help her shed, but nothing was quite right. Even in the servants’ quarters, the legs of all the furniture at the manor had been sanded smooth. She spent the day coiling around things and hissing in frustration.

Once everyone in the manor had gone to bed for the night Snake went out to the greenhouse and brought in several big rocks. He set them up in a group, arranging them so she would have a narrow space to crawl through. Emily gave him a grateful hiss and started pressing her nose against them to break the skin. He left her there and sat down on the edge of his bed to watch. None of the snakes could understand why he made such a big deal out of a routine procedure, but they were used to it and didn’t say anything about it anymore.

With the rocks in place for her to slither between and push against, her old skin finally began to peel off. Once it got started, it was over quickly. The week-long buildup made it seem almost anticlimactic. She crawled slowly between the rocks, pushing first one side then the other against them. Her old skin caught on the rough edges of the rocks as she moved, and slowly peeled off inside-out. When it was over it was like there were two copies of Emily; the vibrant, active one climbing up his leg and the dull, nearly-transparent ghost.

He stood up from the bed, took two steps, and sat down again next to the skin. He picked it up in both hands and turned it over and over, carefully going over every last detail. There was even a transparent scale covering each eye. He found the place where it had split open and ran a finger carefully along the break. The shed was nearly perfect. The split was frayed and there were a few tatters along the length of it, but nothing that he needed to be worried about. He used to see worse sheds before they joined the circus, when they didn’t have anywhere to go if the weather turned bad.

It was such a fragile thing. The fact that it had held an entire body inside of it was amazing. He held one hand up to it and compared the scales. His were thicker but otherwise not very different. They stretched and moved in the same way, and they felt the same to the touch. If only they could cover his whole body. It was disturbing how much of him was human. His bones were human, and so were his organs. He had arms and legs and ears. His skin could grow hair in the places that weren’t scaled. He needed to eat every day, multiple times even! He couldn’t slow down into torpor when it got cold, no matter how much it stung and froze.

Wouldn’t it be nice to just split his skin open and slide out of it? To leave all the extra parts behind him on the ground and join the other snakes. They would teach him how to sense prey moving even on the darkest of nights, and how to climb and coil and move without any pesky limbs holding him back. Or maybe they wouldn’t have to teach him. Maybe if he could just get rid of his human body he would know instinctively how to do those things, just like they did.

His scales were itching and his human skin tingling just thinking about it. If he thought hard enough he could almost feel it happening. The skin on his head breaking open, everything inside of him shifting around into a new shape, his arms and legs losing feeling as they were cut off from the core of his body. He would move and everything extra would peel away from him like so much useless flesh.

He didn’t realize that Emily was talking to him until she leaned over and flicked her tongue into the corner of his eye. _Are you okay?_

Nodding slightly, he told her _I’m fine_ by gently petting down her back. How long had he been sitting there?

Emily slithered over his shoulders and down his arm, hissing softly. _You shouldn’t spend so much time on those, they don’t matter anymore. Just throw it away._

She was right of course. It was ridiculous of him to think about this so much. But he couldn’t just throw it away. In that moment it was a challenge for him to even let go of it. Eventually he set it back down between the rocks, carefully arranging it so that it looked like he had never touched it. He would get rid of it in the morning. Maybe.

He tried to ignore the disconnectedness he was still feeling as he got ready for bed. His skin still itched and felt like it was stretched incorrectly over his bones. He shouldn’t be taking up space this way, he should be long and streamlined and coiled up under a log somewhere. Every inch of him felt unfamiliar and wrong. He knew that if he ignored it then eventually it would stop, but in the dark it was impossible not to focus on the uncomfortable way he was splayed out on the bed. His arms kept folding back and blocking him in, and his legs felt like an impossible tangle.

He turned over onto his stomach. Pinning his arms under himself helped, even though he would wake up sore. He just needed some sleep. He would feel better in the morning. Shutting his eyes tightly, he listened to the sounds of the snakes crawling around the room and hissing quietly to each other as he settled gradually into sleep.


End file.
